


Go, Gaze on Fallen Antar

by ninhursag



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex Manes is a prize of war, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Alex Manes, Dubious Morality, Evil Noah Bracken, F/M, Invasion, Jesse Manes is a War Crime, M/M, Michael Guerin is a general, Minor Character Death, Prisoner of War, Prize of War, Psychic Bond, Slavery, Swords, Torture, War, rape revenge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2020-11-15 05:56:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20861342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: Ten years ago, Lord Jesse Manes and his armies took down an ancient, powerful city. Now the dead Queen's son is back for revenge, at the head of an army, and everyone is going to pay.The story of the fall of Antar is often told ten years from the day it happened. There are a thousand versions, the poet's tales are taken next to the diplomat's, next to the scribe’s, next to the victorious Lord Manes, next to the Lady Isobel's who was hidden safely in the mountains with her brother and only had it from her cousin in the parts he was willing to tell.Her cousin, the Witch Queen of Antar's golden son had nearly all of the story, but he didn't tell it to anyone, he wrote it in bloody vengeance across the land.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags, by all means, but note that Michael/Alex is a consensual pairing. They have a lot of issues in this story but a lack of cosmic love for each other isn't one of them.
> 
> If you have specific questions about the warnings, feel free to reach out.
> 
> Thanks to Lambourn and the ladies on discord for letting me rant at them about this story. They are all very tolerant people!

The story of the fall of Antar is often told ten years from the day it happened. There are a thousand versions, the poet's tales are taken next to the diplomat's, next to the scribe’s, next to the victorious Lord Manes, next to the Lady Isobel's who was hidden safely in the mountains with her brother and only had it from her cousin in the parts he was willing to tell. 

Her cousin, the Witch Queen of Antar's golden son had nearly all of the story, but he didn't tell it to anyone, he wrote it in bloody vengeance across the land.

But this is the version of the story noble women tell in their solariums: 

Once it happened that Lord Manes' wife died of grief. What grieved her isn't known, for she had four strong and handsome sons and the youngest was the fairest. Still, she died in winter, and in the spring he went out seeking a new bride for his bed was cold.

And he rode through the hills and came to a spring in the borderlands between his country and the kingdom of the Witch Queen Mara. And there he saw her kneeling by the water. She shone in the moonlight with her women around her, her skin kissed by the sun, washing her beautiful yellow hair. No one was more beautiful than Mara in her youth.

And he wanted her.

He fell to his knees that night and begged for her kiss. 

But she saw him and she laughed and drove him away, off into the night, for her blood was power and no mortal could claim her. In fact, it is said she loved a warrior of her own people and to him she had already borne a son, Guerin, who she called her heir. 

How he raged, that mortal Lord. How he plotted.

But she would not have him. And she had dared to laugh at his suit.

So he sought a way to conquer what could not be wooed. In his city was a priestess, a Pythia, by the name of DeLuca. He made an offering to her and asked how he might conquer Antar and Queen Mara. 

And that was how he discovered the golden flower that bloomed in the mountains, the flower that stole the strength and magic of the old blood of Antar with its pollen.

Many years, he cultivated the flower, sharpened its effects. Planted it in the foothills like a weed and watched and learned it's seasons and blooms. Until the Queen's son was almost a man grown.

With an army he came like a thief in the dark, when the Queen's lover was away with her main army. A traitor, he subverted. The gates were opened before him.

And Antar fell to him, and the Queen and her son.

Terrible was her fate, beyond words. 

They hung her by her hands at the city gate, her pride and laughter in ruins like the stones of the city. And her son, they stripped him and chained him like a slave, naked in front of the army and made her watch.

They say she cursed them all before she died. The Lord and his four sons, the golden flower, the Pythia and her only daughter and every man, woman and child of the Manes’ lands.

That was ten years ago and Lord Manes has only two living sons now, the Pythia has gone mad, raving in the streets, and the golden flower no longer blooms. Not so much as a leaf of it can be found in all of the land, other than what was built into the walls of Lord Manes' City with the belief it could keep the survivors of Antar out.

And the witch Queen's son, maimed of hand and heart, is at the head of an army himself now and his rage, they say, is terrible. Terrible as her death, terrible as the fall of a great City.

Nothing grows in Antar now but death. And Guerin and his armies are even today laying siege to Lord Manes' City. They say he is her curse now, made flesh.

***

“The walls are going to fall at any moment,” Lord Noah Bracken said, with an unnatural, vigorous cheer. “No one has taken it in centuries. Not until you, my General.”

“We’re the old blood of Antar,” Guerin said, grinning back, the excitement of impending victory catching fire in his belly, the final, final end to all of this. "Ten years is nothing. We always win in the end."

The sun was relentless, and sweat glued his hair to his head, linen shirt to his skin. He felt fresh as a daisy, high on adrenaline. They had laid this siege six months ago, and the walls had seemed impenetrable then, laced with magic that made them proof against the powers that had razed other cities. The powers that Lord Manes had tried to exterminate with Antar itself ten years ago.

To anyone who didn’t know siege engines like Michael Guerin did, those walls could stand for years, longer, while the besieging army withered and died of disease and attrition.

“You, you mean.” From the other side, one of the captains said from his other side. He reached out like he might clap Guerin on the back but his hand fell away before connecting. Michael Guerin wasn’t to be touched, unless it was in training or he had specifically invited it. 

“Yeah. Me, I mean.” Guerin’s smile turned up, cold and ferocious. “This one is for my mother. And if any man finds Lord Manes--”

“We’ll take him,” Bracken said. “For Mara. And for you.” 

“You’ll be rewarded. I am going to string him up alive by the wings of his lungs. Mother is waiting to meet him in the afterlife and I want him delivered in style.”

No one answered. There was a concussive crash of a ballista meeting failing stone and mortar and the walls crumbled. The men bellow let out bellowing cheers as they overran the fortifications, formations still holding orderly. 

Guerin was on his feet, sword at the ready. “I want you two running communications and clean up. Get me some messengers with the old blood too-- we’re going to go black once we're in there, the city is a maze and the crowds will make runners difficult.” 

“No one here with more of the old blood than you and me, Guerin,” Bracken said, easily. His power shone in his eyes. “I want to go in. The Captain can run things with you on this side.”

Guerin nodded sharply, attention almost gone. “Be my eyes. Keep the civilians out of it if you can, hey?” 

“It’s been a six month siege, people have died. The men are out for blood,” Bracken said with a sad shake of the head. “Do you really think we can restrain them with words?”

Guerin’s smile faded, “Nah, probably not.” Terrible things happened when cities fell. Terrible things had happened when Antar fell, after all, and these poor fuckers just happened to live where he needed his army to be.

It was the way things happened in the world. At least today he knew that his people were the ones who were safe.

It was time to get the thing done.

\\\

Inside the city walls the sun was just as brutal on the tangle of narrow streets. The gardens had dried up months ago, when the rains stopped and the wells were blocked down to trickles by the invading armies. The people were parched and the land was desiccated. 

The heat was only ever relieved when the winds came. There was no wind today. The stink of death had no direction to go so it lingered, choking the living who were still trying to run. The dying had blood to feed the thirsty earth.

"Mama," Maria screamed, when her mother dropped her hand in the middle of the shoving, desperate crowd and was immediately pushed away from her. "No."

She tried to shove into the sea of people, knocking each other over, trampling, screaming.

Someone caught at her gown and she stumbled. If she fell, the crowd would swarm over her. Her mother was lost.

"Mama!" She yelled. The screams got louder and she could hear hoofbeats, arrows whistling. 

The soldiers were herding the refugees and they were not letting them pass.

She thought she saw the green of her mother's dress, she thought she saw--

"Maria!" A strong hand caught her elbow, caught her and she almost flinched until the voice in her ear penetrated the screams.

She turned, relieved, to see the handsome face of the Lord's youngest son. He was filthy, mail and leather streaked with blood. The crowd around them was too tight for a sword to swing but he had a wicked looking dagger in his free hand.

"Alex!" She screamed over the wails of the terrified and the dying. "I lost Mama!"

She felt his arms tighten around her, a rock in the ocean. "I'm sorry, I can't see her!" He shouted back, voice pitched for her ears. 

She wailed then too, finally, while he held on, moving her carefully, slowly through the breathless sea of the desperate and dying. 

They looked for Mimi, they looked. Too long, she knew even then they’d spent too long looking for someone who was gone. If he hadn’t come after Maria, Alex would have been safe. If they’d hadn’t looked for Mimi, they would have had more time.

Eventually, they stopped, the soldiers were pressing closer. Mama was dead, or as good as. Lost.

“Can I take you away?” Alex called into her ear and she nodded with a last sob. It was her fault-- she’d dropped her mother’s hand, she’d lost her, she’d kept Alex back, it was her fault.

She didn't know how he did it, how he knew which direction to push through, but they were on the edge of the mob, with the burning parts of the city to their backs. He pulled and guided and eased her out and they were free, in a back alley, out of the crowds. The air still stank but there was more of it.

He drew in a long, shaking breath. She collapsed against him, holding on hard.

“Maria,” he said, like he couldn’t believe he had her safe against him. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t comprehend her grief. Her mother was gone, somewhere, likely dead. And here she was, with Alex Manes, hiding inside the walls of their own city while it was overrun.

“Alex. What happened?” she asked him, still holding on to his body, her voice hoarse now. “The gates? How did they breach the walls?”

He shook his head. “Their siege engines pounded through them. I tried to get the defenders rallied but-- father took some of the men out and-- listen, I’ll tell you what I can, but now we need to get out of here. Their men are battle mad, if you’re taken I won’t be able to protect you.”

"Mama," Maria grieved. “She’s probably dead, isn’t she?”

"I'm sorry." Neither of them said that she'd be better dead. That maybe they'd be. 

That Alex shouldn’t have come for Maria either. 

Instead of talking, he grabbed her by the hand and they ducked into a narrow alley, one where a baker used to have a shop and hand out treats when they were children. It was empty now, the shop, graffiti about gods and whores and doom drawn on it in red paint. Abandon all hope. 

“We’re going to need supplies,” Alex told her, quiet as they scurried through the streets of their own home like rats. “There’s barely any water that’s clean, the cisterns are empty and they’re going to poison the wells when they go street to street.” 

“Why?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure she cared to know, another misery. “Haven’t they already defeated us?”

“I would,” Alex said shortly, a rueful not quite smile on his face. They ducked into another alley, crouched behind another vacant shop, this one that still had a door. Alex scouted around, clearly looking for supplies as he did, finding little. It had been a long time since there’d been new goods for any one, even the highborn, and hoarding was punishable by death. “You’d want to flush out potential street fighters and General Guerin knows what he’s doing. He beat me.”

Her feet hurt, her throat was choked with dust. Water sounded amazing, even if it was poisoned. “He didn’t beat you, he beat Jesse. Your father didn’t listen to you.”

Alex shrugged, knocking over a battered shelf to get at a hole in the wall she would have missed. There was something inside it-- a sack. “I should have made him hear me. He was convinced that the walls were fortified against the Antaran powers so we’d be safe.”

“They weren’t?” Maria asked as he opened the sack and grinned to himself, tossing her a dried apple. It was sweet and tacky and amazing on her tongue.

“They were. Guerin’s a fucking engineer, with gold and engines. He didn’t need to use his gifts.” He bit into an apple himself and chewed carefully. There was a long pause while he just looked at her, eyes dark and shadowed, skin a little too grey even under the dirt and blood of the battle and the crowds, like he’d been worn through before this started. “I have no fucking clue how to get you out of this city and anywhere safe with the supplies we have, Maria, I am so sorry.”

“You could have been out, you must have had a plan,” she said, just as quietly. “You spent too long looking for me, for Mama, for… why did you come after me?”

That made him startle and stare at her, uncomprehending. “Why did I-- what? Maria, you’re my best friend. You’re my family. And you’ve never seen a city fall.”

“They’re going to hunt us down and kill us,” she said and the stomach twisting feeling when the city walls were breached, when she fled into the streets clutching her mother's hand, when she lost her, the knowledge that this was the end, it hit her in another wave. Made her hug herself and shake. “Everything is over. I understand.”

But the look on his face, stark and bleak was worse than that. “No. You don’t, you can’t. There’s an army inside the walls that wants revenge for six months of siege and they want it on all of us, personally. Everyone they don’t kill outright they’re going to torture, rape and sell on the slave markets.”

That didn't help. It didn't. “And now that can be you, not just me, if we don’t get out of this.”

“I’ll take my chances,” he muttered and tossed her another dried apple. "I'm not going to leave you behind, Maria."

She nodded again, and not knowing what else to do she stepped over and wrapped her arms around the broad length of his shoulders, pulling herself to him hard. "I won't slow you down," she swore.

That was a lie.

They got caught over a child, a street child Maria didn’t recognize.

It was near the back gate, the crumbled entrance to the old aqueducts that had been bricked over long before either of them was born.

"It'll lead out of the city. We can take our chances with resupply when we're clear," Alex said, though his face wasn't hopeful. They were moving quickly, house to house, ducking and hiding from soldiers, from other dusty refugees. Maria tried to ask about them, some of them must be neighbors, must be their people, but Alex just shook his head. “We can’t. I’m sorry.”

It was wailing, the child. It was Maria's fault. The child was as good as dead, but it was wailing and Maria couldn't bear it.

"Please," she whispered and clutched at Alex's hand. "Please. We have to-- something--"

He squeezed his eyes shut and nodded, like the wails were piercing through him too. “Yeah, okay,” he said.

**

This is the story the soldiers tell about the fall of Antar:

Once there was a mighty general, who's name was Rath, he who conquers. He had a sword named Death and a shield named Life and any man who saw him fight would die to follow him. He had power too, for he was of the blood of old Antar.

But Rath had a weakness that brought him to his knees. Her name was Mara, Mara the golden, who sat on the bone throne of Antar.

He saw her and he knelt to her and offered her his sword and she took it, smiling and bid him rise. But when she smiled he was always on his knees.

She bore him a son, with a good strong arm and a mind as sharp as steel and Rath was proud and happy. The boy was like his mother, fair to look at and clever, with his own kind of gentleness. But like his father, his hands were made for weapons and tools. Above all he loved engines, the son of Rath and Mara.

It happened during one campaign season, when his son was in his seventeenth year, that Rath took his armies and went to war leaving behind only a small guard. They fought hard and knew great victories and marched singing back home, all unknowing, to find utter ruin.

The city, their City, rich in age and power, was sown with salt and blood, the dead in piles, the gates smashed open.

And hanging on the gate by her wrists was beautiful Mara, the queen, her dead sightless eyes fixed in horror on something that was no longer there.

Of his son, Rath found no trace. He captured many of Manes' soldiers, who cowered and wept but did not tell him where his son was, even if he lived or died.

So Rath began to search for him, in the dark places of the world. Prisons and slave pits, mines and galleys. He found many of the people of his city that way, broken in body and spirit, but not his son.

And Rath came at last to Manes' City, but his powers could not break through the golden flowers built into the bricks of the walls and his army was forced back.

Rath died, they say, in a hunting accident in the mountains, after all of that, never to see his son again.

But Rath's army continued to search for their lost Prince, until, at last, he found them. No one asked how, for he looked strong and tall and had a sword in his good right hand. His left was shattered, but it never stopped him.

He came to the general who had been Rath's second in common, with his cousins on either side of him. Strong Max and beautiful Isobel.

He said, "if you follow me, we will burn Manes and his city alive. Who's for revenge?"

And he was Rath's son. They followed him, and he gave them victory.

*"

The child escaped. A patrol of soldiers caught them and they didn't.

"Hey now, what have we here?" One of the soldiers called.

Alex had his sword out in a moment, grip easy in his hand. He had to be exhausted, even more than Maria was, from fighting, running, but he didn't look it then, in that moment. He eased Maria behind him wordlessly, his body between hers and anything else. 

"I suggest you let us pass," he said, the cold of winter in his voice.

There were six of them, armed and armored, blood and gore soaked. Laughing. Maria shuddered.

"Give us the girl, and maybe we'll let you live, boy," one of them hooted.

Another, more sober. Maybe drunker. Laughter in that voice, drunk on adrenaline and battle rage if not wine. "Not a word of that, Long. He's as pretty as her. I'll take them both, all ass is the same in the dark."

Alex just shrugged, loose and easy, and beckoned with the hand that wasn’t on his sword hilt. Maria, from behind him, could hear the deathshead grin in his voice even if she didn't see it. "Come and take me then."

The man who took his challenge first died, fast. Gutted, insides slippery on the ground as Alex drew back his blade. Beckoned again, inviting another.

From behind the shelter of Alex's body Maria could just see the expression on the rest's faces, drunken amusement turned to bitter rage. She could see the faint tremors in Alex's back. He was tiring, he'd been tired before today's battles had even begun. There were five more.

She slipped her own dagger into her hand, loose on the hilt. Pointy end goes in first. By the time she was in range to use it, the fight would already be lost. Maybe she'd best save it to use on herself. A maiden in a story would.

Alex stood steady and still, a rock under the taunting. Ready, despite everything. Maybe if they kept at him, one at a time? "You'll pay for his life. I'll have your sword and your woman and you," the first one called.

There were five and he was one. The loud brutal clash of steel. Someone screamed. One of them?

Another? She wanted to close her eyes. Alex was still up. There were four.

Then someone screamed. Or maybe not then, maybe first, a bolt, an arrow, it flashed past her, whistling. A crossbow bolt.

The force of it went through the arm of one of the enemy, just one of them, but then it drove deeper down, piercing the flesh and into Alex's leg. She could see the impact tearing apart the one man’s arm. Alex’s leg.

Blood. There was blood, flesh, meat to feed the earth. Alex didn’t scream, but he turned, pain and shock in his face. The moment was frozen, just then, as if it was only them and no one else, just this despair. The way he looked at her, mute, desperate apology in his dark eyes. He knew what would happen next. And his leg, but he didn’t scream. 

Someone did-- screamed his name. “Alex, Alex, no!” It was her.

Alex went down hard, on his knees, then crumbled on the ground, and she had her dagger, but there were three. There were three, and they were armed and trained and she wasn’t Alex.

She didn't get a chance to use it to do more than slash, maybe cutting flesh, before it was forced out of her grip. It clattered on the ground. Hands grabbed at her from behind, rough, and harsh. Catching her hair, tearing at her gown. She screamed but no one heard her over everyone else’s screams. 

Alex was in the dirt, bleeding. The man with crossbow grinned as he gave a rough kick to his side. Alex's head lolled, unconscious, not dead. His body jerked from the impact.

"Don't hurt him, don't touch him," she howled kicking and fighting like a trapped animal. Nails and feet, helpless against armor. 

"Be nice to us, pretty, and maybe we won't." The man grabbing her laughs, sour breath rank in her nostrils.

The crossbow man looked up and shook his head. "Don't kill her and stay away from the face. She'll be worth a pretty packet on the market. The boy too, if he lives."

He pulled Alex's sword out of his lax hands with an amused pride and cleaned it off on one of the dead men's trousers. He was well made, dark skinned and clever handed, bright eyed, his armor perfectly fitted and expensive. His features should have looked fine, but they were monstrous in the sunlight.

"Beautiful," he said, smiling at the sword. Then down at Alex's twitching body. "Exactly what I wanted."

"Lord Bracken," one of the men called. "Should we just kill him? He killed Long and Jack."

The man, Bracken, raised a brow. "Your decision. Were you in his position, would a clean death on the field suit you or the long lingering revenge I'm sure we can come up with?"

They laughed. Maria flinched.

Bracken paused and looked from sword to the broken body of the man he'd taken it from. "Actually, perhaps... I did bring him down after all… perhaps I'll have him. After all, I promised my wife I wouldn’t have a girl while I was at war and I wouldn’t want her upset."

There was another snicker. Laughter. Bracken, knelt down then, calm as anything. He was practiced, like a man who'd done this before, who could casually kneel between someone's legs and pull out his dick. It was hard.

"Don't," Maria whispered. She'd done this. She'd begged. She'd cost time, she'd...

Alex still wasn't conscious, not really, but Maria could see, she could see his body flinch, hear the bitten off whimper and attempt to twitch away when his trousers were unfastened. The way he couldn't. He wasn’t-- he couldn’t-- please let him not be there for this. 

The man was between his legs, her best friend, her brother's legs. There was something like a fight, brief and violent that ended with a punch to the ruined flesh of Alex's thigh.

A scream tore out of Alex's throat and his eyes snapped open when the man fucked him in the dirt while he bled.

It was fast, very fast, after that, like the monster was already half way to coming before he’d even started. Then Bracken got up again and fastened his trousers. Alex's were down, his hands still fisted on the ground.

"Bring him to me if he doesn't die," he ordered and walked away with Alex's sword in his hand, a shrug and not a backward glance. "I have plans."

The man who had Maria by the shoulders shoved her down onto the stone and dirt of the streets. She felt the whimper tear out of her.

Should have used the dagger, she thought, and then they were on her. She should have used it to keep Alex away from her, she’d done this. 

It ended. Everything ends and this did too. They tied a rope around Maria's wrists and she was dragged as much as led by it. Alex was deadweight-- not actually dead because they'd have left him there. She told herself that. Not dead because he was breathing.

He looked smaller, slighter, stripped of weapons and armor, his face still tight with pain, even in unconsciousness. Pain meant he would wake, didn't it? Bleeding meant he was alive.

Alive. She told herself, as if it wasn't a curse to have survived. Alive, she was alive, and she was stumbling, sore and filthy and torn up and Alex... if he lived through this.

They laughed when she stumbled, dragged her up when she fell and she didn't give them the satisfaction of screaming anymore but that meant nothing now.

//

Michael Guerin lost the adrenaline of victory at the point when he washed his face clean of blood and ash, looked up from his maps and troop placements and the moaning started. 

The soldiers were bringing back prisoners. It happened, Bracken was right, there was no real way to prevent it after a siege, especially a long bitter one as this had been. Especially ten years after Antar. Almost to the day.

The men took captives to use or misuse. He looked back down at the map, took a careful swig from his flask and tried not to listen. It wasn't him. He was the cause of it, not the victim.

It wasn't mother. She was dead. That was long over. This was everything he'd promised her, but without Manes to cap it off.

It felt like hours before Bracken came back, back from scouting what was left of the city and knocking out remaining pockets of resistance. 

"Guerin? The battlements, where should we place the archers-- here?" He said, drawing attention back to the map only moments after coming in. "I scouted the location just now, and it's a good vantage to catch stragglers."

Bracken had always been a good enough man, his sister's husband, a good officer, a brother of a kind. Michael knew he still didn't understand. He was a soldier, he’d never been conquered and couldn’t know.

But he was careful of Michael’s weakness. Said nothing of how his commander wanted nothing to do with listening to the defeated wail and he was willing to humor the need.

"Yeah, right there. A ten count."

Michael sighed and rubbed his eyes before looking back after the silence stretched a little long in the tent.

Bracken wasn't looking at the maps anymore, but down at his scabbard, smiling and running a thumb over the sword hilt with an unfamiliar sigil on it. "New blade?" Michael asked.

"Oh yes, prize of war. It's a beauty," Bracken said with a supremely satisfied, almost dreamy smile on his face. "An absolute pleasure to wield and to sheath."

He laughed sharply at that expression. "You sound like you wanna fuck it, not fight with it."

Bracken just smirked knowingly. "We aren't all as particular as you, Guerin."

Michael frowned and returned a sharp look at Isobel’s husband, "you'd better be particular enough to suit Isobel."

There was another shrug and grin. "I’ve had no women, I swear it. Been true to my word to her. She never said anything about... swords."

Michael shook his head. "You're a strange one," he said. "Let's talk about the wells. If Lord Manes is still in the city, he'll need to resupply to escape. The land around here is a barren waste outside of our supply lines."

Bracken released his grip on the sword, sharp and present again. The look in his eyes turned quieter, kinder, with his focus back on Michael. "We've gone street to street and no sign of him or his sons. He may have gotten out when the walls were breached."

Michael's hands curled up, tight into fists. His good hand going easily, and the other shaking. "I want him," he said. "He'll regroup if he gets out. Go to ground and rise up with another army against us. I want him. We need to make sure there's nowhere to hide."

Dark eyes looked at Michael with so much compassion then. "My brother, my general, we'll find him, we'll make sure." 

"The youngest son, if he's captured, I want to. Don't--" Michael muttered but he didn't finish the thought.

Bracken stepped closer, as if to offer an embrace. 

Michael forced a smile but still tried to duck away from the touch. Bracken caught him anyway and held him hard, harder than Michael wanted, but he knew the touch was only there trying to warm, to comfort. It wasn’t Bracken’s fault that he made Michael’s skin crawl and shove everything away.

The scent of him, of war, of something heavy and bloody-- it just made it worse.

**

This is the story that slaves tell, in whispers, about the aftermath of the fall of Antar.

How they dragged people off the streets, butchered the children too young to sell and the old folk who could not run. How a young prince who could fight but was meant for learning and rule and not war tried to rally the people of the City.

How they'd fought and died for him, valiantly. How none of it had mattered in the end.

They took him and they stripped him to shame him in front of everyone, the army, the shaking remnants of his people. His mother.

They stripped him and they chained him and they laughed at his tears. Jesse Manes and his two eldest sons and those of their commanders who wanted to. 

They had him there in the open while his mother cursed them.

The third son looked away and refused to see or participate.

But the youngest-- he couldn't, wouldn't look away. He crept up after, in the night, and tried to offer some comfort to the fallen prince. 

It isn't known what passed between them that night, but they say in the morning Lord Manes woke to find his son crouched by his prisoner, holding his hand. Two boys sharing sympathy in the dark when they should have had none for each other, when they should have had the sour hatred of the conquered and the gloating of the conqueror.

And that was how Guerin's hand came to be maimed, the one he used to hold on in comfort.

That is not the end of the story. The slaves know what happened next, how the boy was sold, how he fought, and how he escaped. No one helped him, they said, he saved himself.

But slaves don't write that part of the story down, it is only ever told in whispers, because someone else will need to follow that path someday.


	2. Interlude (on the banks of the River Caulfield)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the fall of Antar an escaped prisoner meets the daughter of a cook and both their worlds change.
> 
> Or how Liz saves Michael.

Elizabeth Ortecho, called Liz, who began her life as a cook's much loved daughter, knew about Antar only as a story. That was until the echoes of it presented themselves-- himself-- bedside her on a river bank outside of the small village of Caulfield when she was doing her washing. She scrubbed laundry on her board and hummed a tune about geometry.

And someone came up behind her and finished up the rhyme with a casual drawl. "And that's how Meterus of Antar took the measure of the shape of the world and taught the geometry."

She startled. It-- he was just a young man, her own age. He was mostly covered in a dark cloak, all over, but he had bare feet, digging in the mud. He had a tangle of curly hair and his eyes were a soft golden brown, squinting in the sun.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," he said, softly, "I didn't notice you there until… the geometry song," like he could have entirely missed her and the laundry board and basket until he heard her. “My mother used to sing me that.”

She carried a knife and had it out quickly-- Liz Ortecho knew how to defend herself. "Well my father is with a private fighting company," she spat. "Touch me and you'll have a nest of angry mercenaries on you." Never mind her father was just the cook, not a mercenary himself. 

He blinked at her. "Wouldn't be the first time," he muttered with an ironic eyebrow. "Not my favorite, though."

She glared, still holding the knife out. "What are you doing here? Show me your hands."

He half laughed at her then, a bubble of it, which startled both of them. "I can't. Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. Or be your problem for very long."

Liz bit her lip and looked him over again. His bare feet, the tracks they'd left in the river mud, a rusty color. Bleeding, he must have cuts on them. "What do you mean, you can't? Show me your hands," she demanded.

There was another inarticulate shrug. "You don't owe me anything, but please? I'm just here to walk that way." He gestured to the river with his chin. "Not hurt you. So. Just… just look away. Please?" 

She shook her head, not understanding. Took a step toward him, letting her knife hand drop on a stupid impulse. She wasn't afraid, that was why. He was afraid, she wasn't. He was shaking.

Walk that way… into the river, with its fast moving currents. He was here to die.

She stepped closer and he flinched back. "Please," he repeated. "Just don't say anything. That’s all I ask."

He flinched again when she was close enough and touched his shoulder. His shoulders were so tight, all twisted up like-- there was a glint of metal under the cloak and… fuck, she understood then.

She could hear other sounds now, running feet and voices from up on the banks, men calling to each other. He started to shake, eyes going more desperate, all whites. "Fuck," he whispered. The hopeless fear caught her in its grasp and she didn’t even need to think before she acted.

"Hide in the pile," she hissed. "Get down."

"What?" He went blank again, shocked.

"Quickly, you idiot." She shoved him towards the pile of laundry and rushes.

He scrambled down on his knees and curled them to his chest while she tossed laundry over him. He was surprisingly small like that, curled up tight.

When a group of men with weapons came down she was ready, she stood up as if she’d just been interrupted, teeth bared and annoyed, hands on her hips. "My father," she spat, "is with a private mercenary company. Don't even think of touching me."

They laughed and shook their heads and showed her their hands. “No harm to you, mistress.” Said they were looking for a runaway. Described the man she’d seen down to the shape of lips. In a detail that was a little too personal.

"Dangerous?" she asked, hands still on her hips, but in easy reach of the knife.

There was more laughter and one of them licked his lips, all lewd and easy. "Maybe he was once," he said. "But the bosses will have our heads if we let him get away. He’s very valuable. Pretty mouth and a nice body if you like boys."

She rolled her eyes, like that irritated her, and muttered. “Well if I see him and tell you, is there gold in it for me? There had better be if he’s so valuable!”

“For sure, pretty mistress,” was the agreeable call back. “You let us know.” 

She didn’t breathe until she couldn’t hear them anymore.

"My sister is a blacksmith," she told him, after, when they were gone, when she pushed the laundry piles off him. He struggled getting up on his feet, balance all off, but he didn’t reach out a hand to steady himself or take hers when she offered it. Because his hands were bound behind his back, she could see it perfectly now when the cloak over him shifted. 

He stopped moving and let her look. Dull gleam of metal, not shackles, a bar, which would restrict movement better. He was bare under the cloak too, skin vulnerable. 

Bare and shaking. Rage in his face as much as fear. Oh, he was dangerous still. Bound and afraid and ready to die if that was escape.

“The last person who tried to help me suffered for it,” his said. Careful. “You don’t know anything about me. Just let me go and you can forget this ever happened.”

She shook her head. “I know you know the measure of the earth by way of geometry. Do you think I know anyone else who can have a conversation about that?”

He made a face that might have had a smile in it, but it was so bleak. “Probably not. Not exactly worth it.” 

“Let me decide what's worth it," she told him, meeting his eyes. He looked right back, steadily, but his mouth twisted.

"Your sister the blacksmith may not agree. You'd be endangering her too," he said.

That just made her shake her head. "Rosa would kill me for leaving her out of this."

He snorted and the bleakness in his eyes was so stark it almost made her flinch. “You’d want to kill yourself if she died because you couldn’t let this go.”

She made a face. "Don't say that, man. You're a person not a this."

That actually made him laugh. "I'm glad someone thinks so."

"What's your name?" she asked. "I'm Elizabeth. They call me Liz."

He sighed. "Michael," he said, like it was a concession. "No one's called me that in a long time, but it's my name."

She took him back along the banks to their camp. Rosa was with her tools, inside her own tent and planning a project. Red lips painted and dressed in her leathers, like she was planning to go into battle herself. Her eyes were wide when she saw who Liz dragged on behind her, looking over his shoulder.

"You're an idiot, Liz," she hissed. "Where did you find-- no why did you bring--"

"Rosa," Liz said, putting her hands on Michael's shoulders so he didn't run for it. She could feel the tremble and flinch of muscle under her touch. "He needs help."

"She's right though," he said, going so still under her hand. "I told you that this was too dangerous."

Rosa stopped and looked at Michael and whatever she saw in his face made her sigh. Liz saw the moment she was in this with them. "Yeah, well, I suppose we like danger, my sister and I. Come here."

He took a deep breath, like he was bracing himself.

His body was a mess under the thin cloth covering him. Liz had a glimpse at the river, but this was worse. Thin welts, burns and bruises, green and purple and black marks of hands. His hands-- his left hand was-- like someone shattered it and left it to heal ruined. Looking at it made her wince. 

His shoulders curled when they stared at him and he flushed around it. Then sighed and almost laughed.

"Not my finest hour with two beautiful women," he said, like it was a joke. "Not really my worst either."

Rosa was too busy examining his bound wrists, the contraption there and the metal on his neck. Whatever it was made her hiss and shake her head.

"There's no seam in the metal. What in the hell?" She muttered. “Who did this?”

Michael looked at her and shook his head. The soft looking curls of his hair half over his eyes. "Not meant to come off. It keeps me where they want me."

"Why?" Rosa asked. But there was something narrow on her expression, like she already knew and was waiting to see what he'd say to confirm or deny it. Liz waited, hands in her lap, watching them both.

He took a deep breath and looked at her directly, then at Rosa. "The metal is made with golden flower pollen. If it's off I'll have power again."

"You're of Antar, of the old blood," Liz said out loud and then it made sense, all of it. Everything wrong and off about him, the imprisonment, the fear and anger, the way he spoke, too well. A war captive, not slave born or trapped by poverty.

He ducked his head and looked down at his bare feet. "I told you it was dangerous to bring me here. I can go back to the river. I-- don't-- don't-- call them."

"Don't be an idiot," Liz told him and met her sister's dark eyes over his shoulder. Rosa sighed and nodded.

"Can you use a weapon?" Rosa asked. "With that hand of yours?'

His eyebrows went up. "I think so. It's been a moon, but I always favored my right," he said. "Why?"

"How do you feel about mercenaries?" Rosa said and Liz frowned and looked in closer.

He snorted and shook his head. But he didn’t look like he was about to try to run for it anymore. "Had worse, had better?"

"As in being one," Liz said, following the thought herself. It made sense. Best place to hide him in plain sight.

A shake of the head and his chin went up. "Oh. Definitely had worse. Yeah. I can use a weapon." He made a sound that seemed barely human. Exhausted. "Give me a fucking rock and my hands back and point me the way."

“Ok,” Rosa nodded, cool and firm, looking him right in the eye. “Let’s get you out of this torture trap. Just remember you owe us, old blood. And we will collect.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I do. I swear it.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad things happen to everyone, this part earns all the tags. 
> 
> However, a rescue is arranged.

This is the version of the story of fall of Antar that Lady Isobel wrote in her journal and told to her women and her followers:

It happened that it was summer and the golden flower was blooming in the hills of Antar. We didn’t know what to make of it then, and no one knew that it wasn’t a natural phenomenon. We knew that they silenced the powers of the old blood and that they clung everywhere, like static in the air.

I remember that it hurt me terribly, my brother Max and I, to be pushed back into our own minds. We had never been alone, without each other since we were born. 

That is why we left the city that summer. We weren’t afraid. We didn’t know there were human hands behind the thing. We went to the high mountains, over the tree lines where the pollen didn’t grow. 

I kissed my cousin goodbye and he wrapped his arms around me and swung me around like he had since I was a girl. “Take care of yourself, Isobel,” he said and I pressed a kiss in the crown of his hair. It curled like his father’s-- it does curl.

I laughed and told him, “Well, I don’t have to take care of you. Don’t burn the city down while I’m gone.” That was the last thing I said to him. I always remember that I said that to him.

I kissed my Aunt goodbye and she took my hands and said we’d see each other again when the winter frosts killed the blooms. And we went up and up and up, into the peaks to our cottage there until the air was clean and my mind was my own again. 

Max saw the smoke from the valley before I did. I was sewing a gown for the winter festival. He called my name and I came out to the window and saw it too.

We couldn’t feel anything-- I couldn’t feel my Aunt or Michael or my friends who died. They were just gone, behind a curtain of the golden flower, untouchable to me. I wanted to saddle up my horse and go back down, I had picked up my cloak when Max came into the room, shaking his head.

No no no. Too dangerous. It was a natural fire maybe.

If it wasn’t-- if it was something that overcame the city walls, the city guard, Michael, what could we do? He urged me to wait.

I should have gone without him. I should have pushed right past him. I could have-- I could have died with the rest or worse. But it would have been right.

Instead we waited for my uncle and his armies to come back through the passes and we went down and down and down.

The fires in the hills had burned out the golden flower by then. I could feel some few, some pitiful few, their minds screaming. 

Not my Aunt, the Queen. Not my cousin. We found her body. I knew, I knew even then, I think that he wasn’t dead, but I couldn’t find him, his father couldn’t find him, like a wall rose between us, made of the golden flower pollen. 

We didn’t rebuild the city. 

Rath put what was left to the torch. 

The remnants of her gardens. 

The library, the reading rooms, beautiful and ancient. The window seat my cousin used to sleep in when he couldn't be pried from his books. 

"He's not dead," I begged my Uncle. "He'll want to come back and it will be gone."

But he didn't hear me. All those beloved books.

The throne of bone. 

A funeral pyre for Mara, he burned it all, and then took his armies and marched, swearing to find my cousin if he lived.

My cousin.

I couldn’t feel him again for four years, dark years, of war and wandering, until he came back, with a sword in his good right hand and a mercenary company who’d sworn an oath to him following him. He wasn’t the cousin who’d laughed and swung me around and danced with me in the gardens of Antar, who’d cut a swathe through the court ladies and gentleman, dying for the touch of the handsome prince. Who'd slept in the cushions of a library window with a book laying open beside him.

The cousin I got back could hardly bear to be touched at all, not by the gentlest hands, not in any way but for war. Not for a long time. 

I asked him, but he wouldn't tell me. "You don't want to know, Isobel," he said and rolled his eyes at me when I said I did, of course I did.

Of course.

“Well, I don’t want to tell you,” he said. And I couldn’t answer that.

But he lived and he danced with me on my wedding day. It was an old country dance, barely touching, with a ribbon between us, but there was laughter in his eyes and he was home again.

When the time came to bring the fight back to the ones who’d taken him, he asked me only to stay away, stay safe. Carefully, looking me in the eye when he spoke. 

“I want to fight for you,” I begged him. “I hate that I didn’t before. I want to fight beside you.”

But he just shook his head, so gently. “I like that this never touched you or Max,” he said. “Can we keep it that way?” 

I know he had his own battle with Max about it, I heard the shouting from rooms away, thrown glasses and bitter words. But I couldn’t bear to go against him not when he asked like that.

I let him go, sent my husband with him for safety and waved my farewell. He let me hold him in my arms before he went.

//

Maria woke up with her hands still tied, this time to a fence post beaten into the ground. She didn't remember falling asleep and only barely being brought and bound here. She was surrounded by people who looked as stunned and beaten as she felt. Women and children, mostly, some crying softly, some louder.

She surely recognized all of them, she'd surely grown up around them. She couldn't bear to listen, not then.

There were no men, no Alex. They'd taken him somewhere else. The man who-- Bracken. That gave her a place to look for him, a name. If he lived.

No mama.

She wept then, in the dirt, helplessly. Let herself have that, sore and shattered and utterly alone.

Then she forced herself to stop. Alex had stayed to save her. She wasn't going to be weak, wasn't going to let him down. There was another way out of this than brute force and she was going to find it.

She tried to push that thought against the curdling, soul stealing fear.

//

The first time he tried to escape, they did something to his feet, something that burned and ripped the screams from his throat. It stole the memory with it. Just pain.

Alex drifted through waves of pain and confusion after that, unfocused and lost. Part of him knew it for a fever.

The rest of him...

He wandered through the city, his city, empty now, narrowing around him as he ran. There were dropped items around him, bags, clothing, a child’s toy. No people. He was looking, looking for someone. 

No one was here. 

"Maria! Mimi!" He screamed, looking in the empty buildings, broken into shops, through the crumbling bricks. 

The walls, the city walls, they had a gap in them, he thought he remembered, and so he ran there to find out if the people had spilled out of it, but--

The land shifted, the land, his body, he was younger, young, on an open plain and the golden flowers were blooming everywhere. They’d used to bloom in numbers ten years ago. The Lord his father had--

Guerin had golden brown eyes, a few shades darker than the pollen clouds, or he had ten years ago. Did he remember?

His father had a smile like sharpened razors in those days. Still, now, it was the same. "This little plant will bring down Antar, Alex. All of our legacies will be secure."

His father, was here, did that mean he had to run? Because if his father found Maria…

No, no she was in no danger? Why would father hurt her?

Where--

Alex's hands were shackled to a bed and around him and in him someone laughed. His body ached raw and deep and his leg, the injury…

He'd fallen he'd failed he--

A landscape, a ruined city, the golden flower pollen choking the air. 

A boy, tawny, just as golden, with matted curls and glassy eyes. His long limbs huddled into themselves, as if he could hide that way from--

"He's Mara's son," father said, loud, voice made to echo through the crowds. “How far can you make the mighty fall?”

They shackled him up there in front of the army, in front of everyone, Mara’s son, Guerin, they--

Alex screamed, he was in the dirt and there were hands on hips, digging and dragging, it hurt, deep in him--

It had been dark later, and cold. Torches flickered, and there was moonlight, but not enough. He was alone then, only then at night. So that's when Alex brought him the water. 

"Drink this, please don't shout, they’ll hear you,” Alex's voice, young, whispering, looking over his shoulder. If he was caught, it would be terrible, maybe even worse. But he had to. "It's just water, please."

"Everyone already heard. Get away," the boy spat even as his whole body flinched back as much as the shackles would allow. "Get away, get--" but the words were pitched to a hissing whisper, he didn't yell. 

His eyes were dark in the torchlight when they should glint gold.

“I’m sorry,” Alex whispered. "I know."

“You will be,” he promised, Mara’s son. And then-- “don’t look at me like that, you have no right. You don't know anything.”

Every word was rage, but his face was fear, lip bitten down, brow twisted in hurt. He was shaking so hard the chains on him rattled. And that seemed to shame him too, just a little bit more.

"It's cold outside," Alex muttered, looking away. "You're-- it's just the cold." He held up the cup of water instead, as if to hand it over. 

"I can't fucking hold it, I can't," the boy hissed, his hands still shaking so hard he'd likely drop it if he he tried. "Don't-" When Alex held the cup up to his mouth for him.

He gulped the water anyway, throat working fast.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Alex whispered to him, again. 

"Fuck your sorry, Manes," he spat, still shaking and glaring. His eyes were glistening, wet in the torchlight.

It was pure impulse for Alex to reach out and grab at shaking hand with his own. They both flinched at the touch, staring at each other, eyes wide. Guerin's hand was clammy, sweat slippery. 

Alex almost dropped away as soon as he took that hand in his. It was Guerin, still staring at him with miserable confusion, who held on with his left hand.

And Maria was screaming, screaming for Mimi, but Mimi was gone, her body crushed under the feet of a panicking crowd. Alex lied and said he didn't see it happen.

Maria was screaming for her mother.

Mara's son screamed when they fucked him on his hands and knees in the dirt with his ruined left hand stretched out in front of him. Mara's voice had stopped by then.

The way they hung her was driving the air from her lungs, slowly, breath by choking breath. 

She was going to die watching them torture her son.

"The witch queen of Antar cursed us with her dying breath," Flint whispered to him later, in the dark. “Father says her curses mean nothing now but I don’t believe him.”

Flint had looked away, not participating in the rape. But he hadn't said a word, after.

"Don't let him hear you say that," Alex whispered back. He didn't say what he'd seen in the eyes of her son, the raw burn of shame and rage. They were all cursed, every one of them who participated, who stood and watched.

Alex woke up in pain, screaming from his leg, his spine. His feet.

"I didn't know who you were at first," someone told him. "I should have recognized the sigil on your scabbard, stupid of me."

Someone was stroking his hair, someone had a hand on the small of his back, someone was talking to him, but only the hand was gentle, the dick that was fucking him was too dry, burning. "He dreams about you, sometimes. Michael Guerin," the man told him. "What did you do to deserve that?"

There was a man kneeling between his legs and he was torn inside, it hurt in a breath stealing way. Intimate and deep, different from every other kind of pain he'd known.

"You deserve this," the dream shaped, naked and bloody golden eyed boy told him, right in his ear. He did.

He woke up again, truly, alone in a tent, naked, ropes around his wrists. His leg swallowed the other pains in his body, throbbing and sharp, the crossbow bolt. Pain and itch that was hard to breathe through. 

He swallowed a scream when he tried to move. 

Someone was wailing. Not a dream.

Maria? 

No, it wasn't her voice, just a woman's. The pain of his leg made it hard to concentrate, but he remembered her screaming, begging, weeping. Impossible to feel his own pain over the echo of that.

Guerin-- no, he’d never begged. And that wasn't a man's scream. 

He forced his eyes open and blinked away a layer of grit. 

He was in a dark, warm tent, on a cot, with his legs apart. It didn't take memory to understand what had happened to him here in this place. He could feel the soreness that would have been pain if he didn't have worse to cancel it. He didn't have time to let his skin crawl.

It was rope, not metal binding him. He could get out of rope. Shove it down, press it away, get up.

His wrists tore escaping and his feet ached under him but he found an old tunic in a corner and he covered himself with it and a cloak. Something was wrong with his feet but he didn't know what.

Just. Had to find Maria--

Had to find someone--

\\\

They put the captive women to work. Laundry, mostly, and gathering water. The water was its own blessing, wet and clear, enough to drink not just to wash with. 

The soldiers herded them, in a perimeter, smug and silent, watching. Shoving out if they spoke to each other, if there were whispers. Choosing a woman they liked the look of and pulling her aside. In the open usually, sometimes to a tent.

Maria kept her head down and her hair covering her face. She didn’t wash, as if the filth would keep her ugly. It didn't always work.

It went on for days and there were still no men-- not their men-- and Maria wondered if they were dead. It was a dull, empty feeling that nothing could touch.

Days before the soldiers guarding them started to relax, when they let them go to the wells unescorted. And that was when she saw Alex-- or he found her.

He looked like death, covered in a dark cloak. Worse when she caught any glimpse of what was underneath it.

“Maria,” he hissed, swaying on his feet. 

She grabbed at his hands to balance him, looking around sharply. Guards weren't looking yet, but any moment.

"Alex," she whispered. "We're going to be caught."

She tried to urge him over away from the wells. The midden trenches stank so the guards didn't linger there.

He didn't say anything, like the effort of getting to her had exhausted his breath and strength. His hands were shaking, slick with sweat.

His forearms were too, his face, everything she could see of him when she drew back the cloak, the thin tunic. Someone had bathed him, or attempted it, but the wound on his leg was seeping through a bandage. Fever stained his cheeks.

"Wound fever," she hissed, smelling it on him when he was so close to her, even over everything else.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "I'm so sorry, sorry."

They didn't get far, but she got to hold him for a bit and he let her, helpless against it while she stroked his hair and wept. "You have nothing, nothing to be sorry about."

The guards pulled him away from her, ungently. 

She didn't even try to run when they grabbed at her, just backed away with shaking limbs, tears still on her face.

"Please," she whispered. It felt hopeless.

She took another step and another and didn't quite follow that they weren't advancing on her any longer.

Not until she took a final step and backed into someone unexpectedly. A solid someone and all she felt was blank fear. She didn't turn around.

But then-- even more unexpectedly, it was a woman, a woman of her own age, dressed in a leather smock with her dark hair bound up. 

“Fuck off, I’ve got this,” the woman said to the soldiers, sharp as an order, and they did. 

Without a grumble. Like shadows. Maria stared at this unexpected reprieve without understanding. 

“My friend,” Maria pointed to wherever they dragged Alex off to. 

“I can’t do anything about Bracken. He’s the General’s brother by law. I’m just the blacksmith.”

“You’re--” Maria stared at the strange woman, uncomprehending. 

She shrugged. “I’m Rosa. Come on, come with me."

Maria followed her wordlessly, not knowing what else to do. They stopped in a tent over nearer the center of the camp, pitched right by the forge.

The space was spartan, a camp bed, a chest, a table spread with expensive paper covered in sketches. It didn't look like a woman's space other than the mirror and box of face paints in the corner.

Rosa looked her over, calm and steady, while Maria stared back. "Who is the man Bracken took to you? Husband? Lover?"

"No," Maria said. "He's not."

"You don't have to lie because you think I want to fuck you," Rosa's voice turned sharp. "Who is he?"

"My brother. My heart," Maria said. She was so tired. Everything hurt, sore to the skin. She slid down on her knees. "I'll fuck you or anyone if you help him."

Rosa hummed softly and nodded. "Good. Do it just like that, on your knees is good. I'd clean you up, but you'll do better like this, build some sympathy."

Maria swallowed. "Better than what?"

Rosa put her hands on her hips and frowned. "I can't overrule Bracken with the men, there's one person who can. So let's stack the odds in your favor."

"Who? You said he was Guerin's brother by law," Maria whispered.

"Yes. So we go right to Michael Guerin. Fortunately for you, I know how and when to find him. But one thing."

"What?" Maria asked, still confused. Why would Guerin of all people help them?

Rosa's eyes were dark, intent. "You never spoke of this with me. I wasn't part of this little passion play."

**

They dragged Alex back to the tent and bed he'd fled from. Bracken looked him over and tsked and muttered.

"Wound fever's getting worse. You should have told me who you were to begin with and I could have turned you over to him." Hands on him, too cold, too painful, stopping the thin layer of clothing off him. "Now I can't give you to Guerin like this, he wouldn't understand."

Another sigh when Alex flinched and tried to squirm away from his hands. 

"Well, may as well have another round while we think about it." Alex felt the breath on his skin. Irritable. He winced. "Men have urges. It is the way of the world."

Bracken dragged him out after, naked and cold. He was humming. Talking.

"You know how they killed Mara? Of course you do, you were there. It's kind of poetic. Guerin will understand that," he said. "He doesn't need to know about the rest."

Alex just closed his eyes and shook his head. Maria, he was supposed to protect Maria. Sorry. 

They hung the Witch Queen on the city gate so that she couldn't breathe, the air slowly pushed out of her lungs, over days, while they tortured her son.

Bracken hung him up on metal and wood, hot from the sun on his already burning skin. There were bars and a door that locked. A cage. 

People were staring, whispering. It hurt but so did everything else by then, fire blended into pain.

**

Michael wasn't going anywhere when he almost tripped over the girl that very suddenly knelt at his feet. 

"Please, I beg your mercy, my lord, my friend-- they're killing him. Please stop them."

This was a thing that happened, the begging. Usually Bracken would keep them all away from him, but sometimes he was elsewhere, sometimes he didn't. Sometimes they begged and Michael couldn't help but listen. 

The girl was pretty underneath it all, in a battered way, bruised, with blood and dirt tangled in her dark hair. Her dress had been expensive once, the fabric fine but she'd clearly worn the torn remnants of it for days now. 

Michael sighed and leaned down to urge her to her feet, trying to avoid touching any more than he had to. Her skin was cold and filth rubbed onto his hands. 

“Please,” she begged. “I will-- anything you want. If you have to kill him, please, please, not like this.” 

Her face was wet with tears and she was pretty. Like-- he’d seen girls like this before. He didn’t bother to say he could do anything he wanted anyway. She’d know that and there was no answer for it. “Fine. Fine. Ok. Show me,” Michael said instead. 

"Fine?" She repeated, blankly, like his answer was a shock. "You'll help him?"

"Yes, why not?" He muttered. The touch of human skin could send the echoes of human misery through it. He wasn't strong that way, like Isobel, but he could feel enough of the girl's terror and the helpless violation. Fly in the spiderweb. There was anger there, buried under shock, but real.

Good, she'd need that. That's how you lived when the numbness faded. 

And she was just one person. He could do one person. One person and whoever she had her will fixed on.

\\\

Maria walked as quickly as she could while Guerin loped along easily at her side, as if they were old friends. He didn’t look at her, not really. Not the up and down greedy look of the soldiers who-- not even the cheerful, wanting looks that men had given her before. 

He didn’t ignore her either, it was just as if she were something other than a body to be consumed. 

She didn't know if she should question this, didn't know if that would make things worse or what worse would look like.

“What do you want for this?"

There was a quick shake of his head and a half shrug as he regarded her. “It doesn’t cost me anything.”

"Really? Nothing."

He made a face. "If I want to take away a soldier's war prize, I can. They’ll probably be happy about it."

"He's not-- he's not someone's-- he's brave and true and strong." She took a deep breath, tried to think. If she told him Alex's name, who's son he was, that might change his course. He hated Jesse Manes, all of this had happened because of that hate.

If she just let him think-- he asked, interrupting her thoughts. He asked the same question. "Who is he to you? Your husband? Your lover?"

She shook her head and almost laughed and have the same answer. "Does he have to be?"

Guerin shrugged, regarding her. "You asked me to help him, not yourself. There's usually some reason why."

She looked away then, the force of his gaze on her too intense. He didn't touch or reach out, like he knew. "Sometimes it doesn't have to be for that."

"Who are you then?" Guerin asked instead of responding to that. "What's your name? You know mine."

"Maria DeLuca," she said, quietly.

"DeLuca," he repeated, eyebrows rising and looking her over again, more seriously. "That's a Pythia's name. Are you a priestess?"

She sighed. "No. I can't see the future either, or we wouldn't be here."

He looked her over again, consideringly. "So why do you have that name?"

"My mother was. Lord Manes turned on the Pythia's cult years ago." She couldn't meet his frank, interested gaze. "It wasn't some tragedy, he didn't hurt us. He asked my mother not to teach me and she didn't."

"Your mother-- she is the Pythia." There was a question there but Maria wasn't sure what it was.

"Was. She died in the city. Trampled." She didn't know what to feel. The howling grief had been choked out by fear and numbness and pain. She had to help Alex and then she would feel.

He closed his eyes just for a moment. "My mother died in the fall of a city."

"So you brought an army to kill mine," she said without thinking about it. Her hand went over her mouth immediately and she shook her head. "I didn't- I--"

But the corners of his mouth quirked and it wasn't with anger. "Was I supposed to slink away in the dark and let Manes live to kill some more?"

She looked away, over at the empty fields and the sky beyond them. "I guess we're all cursed to play our role."

"Well we are," he said. "That's the truth."

And then they found Alex and Maria forgot everything else, the breath choked out of her.

They had him hung in an open aired cage in the burning sun. Strung up against the bars, naked to the elements. His right leg was an oozing, bleeding wound. 

And Guerin stared, blank at first, uncomprehending of what he was seeing and then his mouth moved and he said, "Alex Manes. You brought me here for Alex."

"You know him?" Maria said, and that was all. 

The way Alex had talked, she never would have guessed that they’d met, beyond being on opposite sides of a battlefield. But maybe that was enough, an honorable opponent. Men could be like that and even the old blood were men. But there'd been a story she'd heard whispered once...

And Guerin's face was so stark when he muttered, almost too softly to be heard, a whisper itself. "I don't. He brought me water and held my hand, once. A long time ago." 

He looked down at his left hand and then back at Alex, momentarily paralyzed. 

No, not paralyzed. Intent. Maria had never seen the power of old Antar work in the flesh, the city walls she’d lived behind all her life cancelled it out.

She saw it now. Guerin's hands didn't move, but the world around them did.

The cage door clicked open and the shackles binding Alex to it fell apart without a hand touching them, as Guerin strode forward fast. It shouldn’t have been fast enough to catch Alex before he fell, but it was. 

“Hey,” he said, and Alex’s eyes slitted open, just a little. 

Alex didn't flinch at the arms around his shoulders, holding on to naked and marked skin, holding him up. He did mumble a word, maybe a name. Guerin didn’t either, just held on, steadily.

“Yeah, I remember you too, ‘course I do," Guerin said in response to something only he’d heard properly, and then swallowed around the words. "Hey. How about we get you some water?"

Alex's expression was more confused than anything else. "Dreamed you...hate me?"

Guerin's eyes were greener in the light and he shook his head. "Oh. No. Not you."

"Alex," Maria whispered, coming in at his other side, wincing a little at the impact of scraped skin.

His dark eyes flickered toward her and he frowned for a moment, just before smiling. “Maria,” he said, and that smile was so sweet, surprised. All wrong for the mess his body was. Worse, it was actually worse up close, smelled like-- his handsome face was almost untouched, the bruises under his eyes were just pain and disturbed sleep.

Deliberate, that was a choice that had been made because the rest of him was anything but untouched, injuries and scratches on his back to the burning mess that was the soles of his feet. Scraped up wrists and ankles where he'd fought.

Finger marks on his hips and ass. 

But the worst was still the weeping, open wound that was his leg.

No the worst was how he kept that smile for her while still almost entirely held up by Guerin’s arms around him.

"Maria," he said and he sounded so relieved, like the breathe just escaped him. That bright, light expression, like he wasn't walking wounded, defeated, tortured and raped. "You're alive." And then, the grief hitting right after relief, the smile fading while he looked at her. "I am so sorry. I failed you."

"No," she said, louder than she'd meant to. "You have never failed me."

And Guerin, from the other side, muttered. "When I told you that you couldn't understand what it was like, that wasn't an instruction to go out and learn."

Alex looked at him then, the smile fading into confusion. "But. You knew. I thought you wanted this?"

Guerin shook his head hard. "I. No, I don't inspect the prisoners. Without your lady Maria, I wouldn't have known a damn thing."

Alex just kept looking at him, glassy eyed and head shaking. "What now?"

Guerin sighed and very gently rubbed the shoulder he still had his arm around. "You're mine now. Just breathe and let me handle this."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short but sweet chapter. In which powers are used, wounds are healed.

Alex drifted again, but this time the voices were closer, familiar. Warm. Someone fed him something, a drink, thick, heavy and bitter. He whimpered at the roughness of his throat when swallowing it. It warmed him though. A tincture of something.

It walled off the edges of the pain, forcing rest on him again. He should have been in danger, but on some deep, warm level he knew he wasn't.

He woke a little in a clean cot in a comfortable looking tent, himself the only dirty thing on it.

Maria was there, speaking to a man with the low, rough voice he'd heard in his dreams so many times. Guerin. He knew it was a dream because those two voices didn't belong in the same space, voices low and cautious with each other. 

"His leg isn't healing. It's worse every time I look at it," she said. She sounded scared, worried. It made Alex ache to comfort her. If he could just open his eyes all the way, get up.

"The surgeon will come and see it, and give us a better sense of what to do," Guerin said, with an easy confidence that felt like a false note. "Don't know how long the fever's been burning him, but the poppy milk will help ease him."

Alex sighed when a cool cloth was pressed against his forehead and a gentle hand pushed a strand of hair off his cheek. Warm blankets covered him. 

"-can have them bring in a bath for you. Clean clothes," Guerin was saying. “And something to eat.”

"Clean me up, right. You going to ask for your payment?" Maria asked, her voice tight, hurt, in a way that forced Alex’s attention out of its haze.

Guerin laughed like it hurt him just as much. "I'm not interested in that," he said shortly. 

"You interested in it from him?" The sharpness in her tone was like a knife. "He's yours now, right?"

Guerin came back with a familiar sharpness all his own, so close that Alex could hear the boy in him again, shackled and destroyed. It pulled at him, they both did. He was no good to either of them but he wanted to be, to just wake up. "It's not nice to stick my cock into someone who would rather bite it off."

She sneered. Alex could hear the creeping, soul sucking fear in her, hardly buried under exhaustion, but could Guerin? "Why? Someone take a chunk out of you, Guerin?" she spat.

"Well, yeah." Guerin sounded surprised, not angry, like he didn’t understand the question. Maybe he did understand, maybe Maria was safe...

Alex finally managed to force his eyelids apart with an effort that burned. Everything felt tacky, sticky, too cold and too hot all at once. Flares of pain, though dull still. The drink they’d given him keeping off the worst of it.

"What does that mean?" Maria asked. She was sitting closest, her face clearer when he blinked. They both were clearer, though still smudged and distant. They hadn't noticed his eyes were open.

Guerin was right there, near but not too near. Loose limbed, standing at alert with his arms behind his back. Careful in a way that let Alex relax and stay where he was.

Maria was sitting on a small stool next to him. She looked like she desperately needed the bath that had been offered, even to Alex's bleary eyes. She looked afraid, still.

"Cities fall. Armies take prisoners. It's the way of the world." The shrug Guerin gave was small. "My mother was the Lady of Antar when Lord Manes and his armies took it. They took us also." He glared at her, as if daring her to say something. “But you know that. Everyone knows that-- Manes made damn sure that everyone possible knew it.”

“I didn’t know what it was like.” She sounded so tired and small. “I didn’t know what it smelled like.”

He shrugged minutely again, just a tense raising of his shoulders, eyes still on her. He was good about that, about facing things head on. "It's survivable. You don't want to, but you can."

"Is that why you’re helping us?"

He laughed at her then, but there was something bleak and ancient in his honey colored eyes. "Why are you still acting like this isn’t something you know? Isn't it why you came to me?"

There was quiet for a while, a thing of exhaustion pressing over him. Alex slipped off into that heavy silence. He let his slitted eyes close and drifted off.

Alex woke briefly to Maria, clean and dressed in a man's linen shirt and rolled up trousers, talking again.

"His leg," she was saying, earnest and scared. She was talking to someone, a woman? Dark haired, dark eyed, light brown skin, no one Alex knew.

"The flesh is dying. They can take it off, or it'll rot and poison him," the woman said, calm as iron. "People live without legs every day but not with rotten flesh."

Maria wept. Poor fucker, whoever she was talking about. He wouldn’t want to live without a leg. 

Guerin was looking right at him when he woke up again, gasping at the scream caught in his teeth. Alex's mind was clear of the haze of the drugs they’d fed him and the pain was back, blistering and hot.

"Hey, Alex," Guerin said, "Easy, easy, breathe." His eyes were warm in the dim light, a honey brown haze. "You're safe."

"My leg," Alex hissed. "Don't let them. Don't. I want to be whole."

Guerin didn't scoff or cajole or argue. He looked at Alex like he'd made a serious statement. "Of course." He swallowed visibly  
"Do you want me to heal you?"

"What?" Alex asked, hot and confused. “You can heal me?”

“I’m the blood of Antar,” Guerin’s voice wasn’t quite steady. "I can heal."

“I didn’t know that meant healing.” It wasn't something Lord Manes had ever said when he was raving about the bought blight on the land that was the old blood.

"It's not something we do often. I haven't in… a very long time," the unsteady distance in his expression screamed danger to Alex. Told him to stop. Think.

"Why not?" He asked. "It would make a powerful tool."

Guerin's expression didn't shift much. "It is. Powerful. It's not just a physical thing."

"Would it let me keep my leg?" 

“Yes," Guerin said. "It would also connect our minds. It would have to, the wounds are so deep. The connection, once it starts, it can be unbearable.”

“Otherwise, what, they cut off my leg? Or you let me refuse to have it cut and I die of wound fever? What’s so bad about this mind connection of yours?”

Guerin shook his head, eyes intent. “It can be a violation. You will feel what I do. I will feel what you do. It might be a really strong connection.” Another gulp. "It might not end."

“Why?” Alex frowned and looked down at the ruin of his leg.

“We have shared experiences and our minds would draw on them to make sense of the connection. Most likely, we’d relive them," he huffed a breathe. He still let Alex meet his eyes. "You can refuse. Any of it.”

“So, I can die and leave Maria alone here or be a cripple and useless to her forever. Or let you heal me, and what, you rape my mind?”

“It wouldn’t necessarily feel like a rape. But it can, for some, or like a forced marriage. Like I said, it may be… it might not end. We won’t know what it will be like until we’re in it.”

Alex looked down at the mess that was his leg. That wasn't going to be there for much longer if they didn't do this. “Do it. What’s another forced fuck? At least you’re asking me before you thrust in.”

Guerin barked a half laugh. “Like I told your lady, I don’t thrust in where it can get bitten off.” 

“Can I ask you something else?” Alex forced his mind to listen, to think. It might not end. What did that mean?

Guerin looked at him. “Yes. Ask.”

Another breath. “Will it feel good to you? Being in my mind.”

From Guerin, that brittle almost laugh again, half a sneer. “Of course it will, I get off on being trapped in the mind of someone who was just chained up to be fucked. It's a great time.”

Alex swallowed and looked down at his mess of a body. "Yeah. So why are you offering it?"

Michael expression was still as brittle and he paused for a moment before saying, "maybe I think you have information about Lord Manes and if I heal you you'll turn on him."

Alex gave a sharp shake of his head, which brought its own wave of pain and nausea. Another reminder of why he needed healing. "Even if I did, I'd tell you anyway for Maria. Why are you really doing this?"

"Maybe because you tried to help me once." Right then. In the dark, a hand in his and then, then his father.

"Didn't exactly work out for either of us."

There was all that brittle bleakness on the surface. "Maybe I count the thought."

"Do you?" A challenge in that stare.

"I said maybe." He sighed and looked at Alex, long and steady. "Let me heal you, Alex. Let me give some life today, to someone who deserves it."

"I don't want to lose my leg," Alex replied, because what else could he say. 

"Is that a yes?" Guerin looked him over, carefully now. "I can't give you much time to think about it. I couldn't grow you a new leg."

Right, because this might be… "Yes. Can we do it now?"

"Yeah, your wound is putrid. The sooner the better."

Alex nodded again, slower this time.

He didn't know what to expect, how it would be, look. Michael settled down beside him at the edge of the bed, cracking the knuckles of his hands, the good one and the ruined.

"If the old blood can heal, why not your hand?" Alex asked suddenly.

"I didn't want it," was the short reply. He didn't say why. Alex didn't ask again. He just watched instead.

Michael’s hands, both of them, glowed warm and bright in the soft light of the morning sun. “Try to breathe and clear your mind. I’m not sure what you’ll be drawn into, but if there’s something pleasant you can think of now would be the time. I'll do the same.”

Something pleasant? That seemed like a joke. A stupid one.

Michael's right hand touched the hot rotting, ruined flesh of his leg. And it was, it was as warm as it looked, the touch of his hand, and Alex's body tried to flinch from it but the warmth stole his fear.

And he was, he was, he knew all at once he didn't need to be afraid. Not of this.

It was so warm, Guerin's hand, like vanished safety, the integrity of his skin wrapped around him because nothing bad could touch him now. "Alex," a gentle voice called his name. "Do you hear me?"

He reached out to find the voice, he knew, he recognized. "I hear you, Michael."

And he could hear him, his voice coming from everywhere at once. He was Michael. 

It might feel like a violation, a forced marriage, Michael had just said, but this, this, this. It wasn't.

“Please,” Alex whispered, not sure who he was begging, but he knew he wanted. And Michael's eyes were golden bright.

"Yeah. Come on. I know a place."

He stepped inside at the invitation. He was walking down a corridor, long and lovely, with wide windows on every side. There were halls and passageways and he knew without knowing why that those were kept darker, away from sunlight to preserve the books.

Down each corridor were books about anything, any story. If it was written it would be copied and collected here. 

He'd never been here before, to the great library of Antar, would never go because it was a crater now, burned out and sown with salt so even the plants couldn't take it back. But he knew it perfectly as if he'd loved it all his life, every hall and room.

He knew where to find who he was looking for, in a window at the end of this hall. The light was soft, spring sweet sun. There was a nest of pillows on the window seat and settled in it, a boy with soft looking curls covering his eyes. He was young, not quite grown, curled up with a book in his hands.

They were perfectly whole, those hands, and then the boy looked up at the sound of Alex's footsteps and just softly, sweetly, smiled at him. His laugh was honey warm and lazy. Michael Guerin, 17, and beautiful, like Alex had never seen him.

"Alex," he said and that sun warmed lazy smile was an invitation. Alex swallows hard and took the hands he'd been offered. Michael's hands were strong.

"Guerin," Alex said. "Is this your pleasant place?"

"Where could be better? Get up here." Michael grinned while Alex scrambled up onto the cushions with him. Alex kept a hold of his hands while he settled himself, a little awkward, but safe and close. They ended up pressed knee to knee, just looking at each other, grinning like boys.

The sun shone through the wide window.

It was the warmest he'd ever been.

Alex opened his eyes.

He was sitting in Guerin's tent on that cot bed, in the dusty brutal summer and he knew without needing to look that his body was whole. It couldn't be anything else. Even old aches and bruises were gone and he felt strong, like he could run for hours.

Michael's eyes were so wide, all pupil with a thin ring of brown. His lips were parted just a little, as if he'd only now been kissed.

Their fingers were wound together like they'd been in the dream, whole and broken. Neither of them moved to let go.

Alex smiled at Michael, helplessly. "That was not what you told me to expect," he whispered.

There was a laugh in response, just as helpless, but real. "That's never happened to me before. I didn't know. I didn't know it could."

Alex nodded. "Can I kiss you?" he whispered.

Guerin bit down on that plush lower lip. "It's been a moon," he murmured. Then, after a bare pause. "Yes."

It was the gentlest kiss Alex had ever given anyone, all bright light, like they were boys again and everything was new. Like just the press of lips could be enough.

A low, dark part of him whispered that this, this couldn't be real, any of it, that he was enchanted. That even if it was real, it wouldn't matter, he was a thing now, a prisoner. But he silenced it ruthlessly, with light.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reprucussions of their bond are unexpected. Also, Alex is a badass. Enjoy.

Maria watched Guerin pace outside the tent for a while. He said a few words to Rosa, a few to the surgeon, an exhausted looking dark haired man with dark circles for eyes. Paced some more.

He looked at Maria. 

"I'll tell him," he said. "What the choices are."

"What? The surgeon takes his leg or he dies?" She scoffed.

Guerin shook his head. "There's an alternative."

Rosa and the surgeon, who's name she didn't know, both snapped to attention. "That much?" Rosa asked, softly.

Guerin shrugged. "It doesn't matter. I owe him."

Then he squared his shoulders and walked into the tent. When Maria moved to follow him, Rosa caught her lightly on the shoulder. "He's going to offer your friend a gift. It's a private thing."

"I can't just let him--" Maria began.

"He's going to heal him," the surgeon said. Valenti, that was his name. "He never does that. None of them do."

And Maria stared. 

She waited, she had no choice but to wait, for what seemed like hours. There was no shouting from inside, no voices raised, no sounds of a struggle.

She waited, while the surgeon left and Rosa eventually went back to her work with a shake of her dark head.

She waited until she couldn't anymore. Alex wouldn't, if she were alone with a man who might be-- Alex wouldn't just wait.

She pushed her way inside. 

They were sitting together on the camp bed, knee to knee, smiling.

Alex turned and said, "Maria," looking good, fine, clear eyed and clean. "Are you ok? Hey."

"Me? After what Bracken did to you?" She managed.

"Wait," Michael whispered. "What?" His eyes went wide and stricken. He didn't seem to see anyone but Alex, as if Maria weren't here and hadn't spoken. 

Just like Alex was suddenly only looking at him again, like he was filling up all the spaces in the world. "My sword," Alex said, like that was the important part. "I want to give you my sword, but he has it."

Their hands were joined again, fingers woven together, and Maria had no idea when that had happened. "Alex. Wait here. Let me-- let me bring it back to you."

Alex's eyes truly were clear now, the fever broken. Clear and dark and just as shocked.There was dried sweat on his skin, in his hair, but under it he was clean, unbruised. The stink of rotten flesh was gone, like it had never been at all. 

Clean but not totally. There was a mark there. The mark of a hand, glowing on the clear, unmarked skin of his leg. Like the imprint of Guerin's hand had branded itself into human skin.

"My Lord," Alex said, softly, softly. “My General, I can wait.” 

Guerin’s head shake was just as soft. "Don't call me that. Not you."

"Guerin," Alex replied, an almost smile on his lips, dark eyes soft. "You don't need to. You. You."

"Alex, only wait."

"I said I will." Guerin nodded, gripped his fingers hard, and walked away, determination in every step.

Maria was left staring at Alex. "Your leg," she whispered.

"It's fine," he said. And then he shook his head, hard like he was clearing it. Shaking something loose. Bewitched. "You're here. Are you safe?"

"Am I safe?" She demanded. "Me? What did he do to you?"

Alex's smile turned dreamy again. "I don't know. He healed me. He-- I am. I'm good."

"He said you were his," she whispered, afraid.

And if anything, Alex's smile was wider. "Oh. Yes."

**

Bracken was walking into his tent, muttering under his breath when he ran almost headlong into Michael Guerin. Just waiting for him, arms crossed over his chest. It wasn't exactly a surprise, seeing him.

His anger shifted the air around him like lightning.

“Give me Alex Manes' sword.”

Bracken stopped. Made himself stop. No need to incriminate himself with words, no more than the evidence of the boy's body would have shown. “What? Guerin?”

“Alex Manes’ sword. You cut him down with a crossbow from a height and took it from him. Give it to me.”

“I knew you’d be squeamish over this.” Bracken shook his head like he was disappointed. "He's the son of your enemy. What did I do to him that wasn't done to you?"

"Give me his sword, or I'll make you eat it blade first," Guerin ground out. 

Bracken sighed and put on a gentle, disappointed smile..“You would really fight me, your brother by law, over the child of that man? Maybe I did it for you. You and Mara.”

"You hate Manes, Bracken? No one hates him more than me. But you hate _him_, you don't-- you don't vandalize the body of an honorable soldier."

"His son. That honorable soldier is his blood, as you are Mara’s blood."

Michael shook his denial. "No. Not but by happenstance. Alex is not his."

"He is--" Bracken began but Michael stepped in sharply, voice rising.

"He is mine. Bracken," he spat. His eyes dark gold and static energy that would drive anyone away if they could escape it. “Even if we go by that logic, he is mine and you put your hands on him."

"Aha." Bracken smiled. "Oh, so there's the meat of it." He held out his hands appeasingly. That same soothing smile. "My brother, my Lord, he's yours, of course he is. I didn't know who he was at first and then I hadn’t realized you meant the whole line, not just the father or I would have--"

"No," Michael said. "No, that's not good enough. You tried to ruin him. It doesn't matter who he is. You touch my cousin, you touch Isobel, with the same hands that did that to him."

Bracken scoffed. Another headshake, his hands still held out before him, harmless. "Isobel is my wife, I would never use her like a slave. I've kept my promise to her."

"Like a slave." Guerin went still, eyes wide. Then he shook himself, as if pushing something away. "Like a slave, fine. Then let's let her decide. Your wife?"

"What?" Bracken's dark skin went grey.

"We'll put the matter before her. Let Isobel judge whether you kept your promises." Guerin's expression was dark, knowing. "Tell her how you took and used a slave in exacting detail."

Bracken's head shook. "That's not reasonable. She's a woman, she's never been to war. She doesn't understand."

There was a smile. Tight as Guerin's fisted right hand and still as the left. "I have an alternative if you fear my cousin's verdict."

A long, drawn out breath. "Tell me."

"A duel. Blade to blade, no powers."

Bracken laughed sharply and shook his head. "You want to kill me without a trial. Everyone knows you're better than me without powers, it's not a secret."

"Not me. I'll choose a champion. A human. Kill him, you go free. No judgement."

There was a bark of laughter. Guerin might be better but that didn't mean he wasn't good. "And who is this expendable human of yours?" 

Guerin's face was impassive. "Don't mistake me, it's you who is expendable."

Bracken frowned, staring at him. "You can't mean-- he's my-- forgive me, he's _your_ slave. You can't do this."

"Give me his sword. I'm going to let him feed it to you."

"And when I kill him instead?" Bracken hissed. "I defeated him before."

There was an incredulous laugh. "Do that, and you go free. I have sworn it."

Bracken stalked into his tent without a glance. He came back with a sword, beautiful and unsheathed. Michael took it from him, by the hilt.

**  
Michael strode back into his tent not thirty minutes later, with a sword, unsheathed. A beautiful sword, finely made and perfectly balanced.

Alex's sword.

He lay it next to Alex, like an offering. Ignoring everything else in the world. "Forgive me," he said. 

Alex's mouth curled and he looked at Michael curiously. "Why? What have you done?"

Michael told him. 

The smile Alex gave was more than bright. It was incandescent. 

**

Two men faced each other inside a circle drawn with sand, a crowd gathered around it. Mostly fighting men, a few of the captive women. One or two of the captured men, in shackles but staring. 

The ritual drummers who would mark the duel laid out their equipment.

Maria watched standing next to Rosa who was smiling like it was a holiday. 

Guerin watched on his own, a space around him where no one crowded him, no one came close.

He looked completely still for the first time since Maria had seen him, dressed in an old loose summer tunic and cloak, without insignia of rank. Head bare and gold tinged by the sun. 

His eyes were only for Alex. Her Alex, light on his feet, beautiful, strong and healed with a sword in his hand. His own sword.

Alex's dark, soft hair and focused eyes, the clean lines of his face, the flash of his bared teeth.

"This is my champion," Guerin said and touched Alex once, lightly on the shoulder. Alex didn't look back at him but there was an almost smile to answer.

There were whispers, murmurs, hisses. Manes' son, a prisoner, to be chosen to fight their own commander? Over what? A conquest right? Over fucking a war prize? Never mind half the men had already been whispering that Bracken had taken it too far, should have just killed the man or turned him over.

Maria shuddered, wondering how many of the whisperers had taken part in the rapes and killings.

It was Rosa who faced a man down, smiling viciously. "Not just a war prize. Bracken took the General's prize and mutilated him." Not quite true.

Alex was on the sands, looking distinctly unmutilated and like no one's prize. The captives watched him, women and men, wide eyed. 

The drums began to beat announcing the duel.

Bracken sneered and raised his blade in a sloppy salute. "I hope your fighting has a little more finesse to it than your fucking did," he called. "All that thrashing around and screaming is entertaining but it lacks something."

Alex said nothing, already in a guard stance. His eyes were focused, body loose. 

"I'll enjoy putting my other sword in you, while he watches," Bracken taunted, waiting for the signal to begin. He looked back at Guerin, met the man's steady gaze and then flicked back to Alex. "You think he can fuck you like I can? Or did your father cut off his balls when he had him captive so it's you that gets to do the fucking?"

Nothing from Alex. When he gave his own salute it was easy, professional. To Guerin, who nodded back.

"Take him down," Guerin said, a knowing calm to him, like watching Alex soothed him. An almost smile still playing around the edges of his mouth.

A drumbeat and Alex moved. It was never a contest from that moment. The watching crowd went silent. Only the pounding drums screamed out.

A cut forward, fast, almost too fast to see. Bracken tried to parry, jumping back, catching himself.

Again, Alex moved. Relentless, wordless, thrusting and cutting aside Bracken's attempts at defense. Footwork swift on the sand, overpowering. 

He drove down, and Bracken never got his balance back. 

It took minutes, just long enough that the men watching knew it could have been done in seconds.

"I yield, I yield," Bracken howled, when a vicious hit knocked the blade out of his hand.

Alex smiled truly then, tight and wild. Looking at the man, unarmed, panting and helpless before him. That he had made helpless. "Beautiful," he said, barely even breathing hard. "Exactly what I wanted." 

Then he drove his blade into Bracken's throat. "I hear you like swords. Hope mine brought you pleasure."

The arterial blood sprayed on his face and hands in an arc while the body fell at his feet. He seemed to forget it was even there the moment it turned into meat on the ground in front of him. His eyes on one person only.

He raised his sword again, offering his salute to Guerin and no one else. "My Lord," he said, easily, sweetly. 

To Guerin who nodded, grinning outright. Stepping up closer. "I've never had a champion before," he said.

They were just out of arm's reach of each other, eyes nowhere else.

The crowd was hushed, still, the fighting men and the captives. Rosa, by Maria's side was smiling, bright as the full moon rising, as if it had been her that drove the blade home.

"Enjoy hell, you bastard," she whispered, almost too low for Maria to hear. "Remember my name."

The crowd didn't reignite until Guerin walked away, Alex one step behind him.


	6. Three interludes with the daughters of Ortecho

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three times the Ortecho sisters helped Michael Guerin during the lost years.
> 
> Some mild Michael/Rosa content in the last part.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for christex on Tumblr who wanted more. I've been sitting on the bits of this just putting it out there for you ❤️! Thank you for my remixes!!

Michael could hold a sword, easily, lightly, in his right hand when Rosa loaned him one. It was nothing special but not a cast off either. Just a serviceable blade, well balanced and with a good edge.

Liz watched Rosa watch him hold it, judging, measuring. Rosa always did, when she handed over a sword she'd put her energy into.

“This is a good sword,” he told her frankly when he held up the weapon. His grip was practiced and he took a step forward, back. His arms trembled with the effort of it and he shook his head. "I'll try to be worthy of it. My condition is shit."

"Your form is good," Rosa told him. "You just need to work on your strength, old blood. How long has it been?"

He made a face and laughed a little, like it hurt so much he couldn't help it. "Right. Two years. My master at arms would mock me for my poor showing. And my father, he--" he stopped abruptly. Closed his eyes. 

Liz frowned and looked away. Rosa didn't.

"Old blood," she said, ungently, with a calm that bit. "Don't send yourself where someone else wants you to go. You don’t need to do that." 

He laughed again, at that. "But it's so easy and the road is so smooth."

After Liz watched Rosa, still watching him, speculative, eyes narrow. When he was gone, she leaned in close to her sister, a faint wrinkle between her brows. "Master-of-arms, yes? How high born do you think he really is?" she asked. There was a sparkle of pleasure, mischief, under that speculation. Rosa loved to hold secrets.

Liz shrugged, long past playing these games with her sister. "Does it matter now? He doesn’t have anyone but us now, does he?"

"Of course it matters,” Rosa said, like Liz was being ridiculous. “I want to make the best weaponry possible, have the best tools, make things that will carry my name. And if he is what I think he is, he’s going to give me a chance to do it.”

“Really? As high born as that, you think?” Liz asked, thinking it over herself.

Rosa smirked, leaning in to whisper, “Lizzy, the highest. Lord Manes had a special hell in mind for the Witch Queen’s son, after all.”

Liz shook her head, drawing back. “No, it’s not possible. If he were alive they’d have ransomed him to General Rath. It’s not a secret he’s looking and that he’d pay any price to have his son back. And if Michael is his son--why isn’t he going to him?” 

“If the goal was ransom money Manes wouldn’t have done any of what he did.” Rosa shook her head. Her hands clenched in front of her. Liz reached out, by instinct, to put her own over her sister’s, soft and gentling. Rosa took a breath, “and if I were Michael, I wouldn’t want to look my father, my family, in the eye again. It’s not as if he could lie and say it hadn’t happened, hide from the truth of it. It’s unbearable.” 

“His father would love him regardless,” Liz murmured, not to Michael who wasn’t there to hear. 

"It doesn't always matter," Rosa said back, just as softly.

***

The golden flower began to bloom in the spring and Liz watched Michael’s shoulders hunch in and the curl of his body around itself. The impact of the way the power in his blood was drowned out under the pollen. She watched him pace in the night, before she went to bed herself. He was still awake when she woke, arms wrapped around his knees and his hair mussed, like he’d tossed and turned. Or maybe just tugged on it like he wanted to tear it out. 

His bad hand seemed to spasm more often at these times, but he ignored it, barely flinching from the pain.

“What if we destroyed it?” he asked her one morning, after she’d pressed some fire brewed coffee into his shaky hands. 

“What?” she found herself asking, startled. "Destroyed what?"

His eyes were half closed before he took a long swallow of the bitter liquid. “The pollen. What if there was a way to get rid of it? It wasn’t always here, something happened to make it overrun the land.”

Liz frowned and settled in beside him, just out of touching range. “You mean like, with magic? I think that’s been tried. The whole point is that it’s impervious to power.”

"Right. To power. But there are other methods. Not like magic, not the old blood," Michael said, with a real smile. "More like-- the method of inquiry of the platonics?"

"You-- you’ve studied that?” Liz said, with eyes wide. "Where did you learn all of this? As, um."

"As an escaped slave from a brothel? A prisoner of war? As a what?" He replied, eyebrows arched, as if he wasn't ashamed to say it. She flushed, more at that look than the words. They both knew he wasn't that, even if he wouldn't say who he was. "You're the daughter of a cook for a mercenary company. How did you learn?"

She smiled and shook her head. "We had a scholar traveling with us for a while when I was a little girl. She didn't mind having me under her feet. I learned a lot. Reading, numbers. Inquiry. How about you? I know you were high born, I just didn’t know you’d be interested in that."

He gave a quick shrug and his lips curled a little. "My mother taught me. She loved books."

“Is she dead? Your mother?” She probably should have let it be, but his expression wasn’t stricken, just sad, too quiet, nothing like the him she was starting to know. Rosa thought he was the Witch Queen’s son.

“Yeah.” Just the word. 

“I’m sorry. Was it… bad?” Of course it was bad, everything about his situation was bad.

There was nothing in his face, really, just the sadness. “For a while I thought she was lucky. To be dead.”

“For a while, not now?” she asked softly.

“Turns out I have some things I can still do in the world. Wouldn’t want to be dead and miss my chance.” He finished off the coffee and then he looked at her, quietly. "Like investigate the breeding qualities of plants."

"Breeding qualities of…" she frowned. "You think the quality of the pollen that attacks the old blood is bred into the plant?"

"More than that," he said, eyes gone wider now, clearer, considering. "I think we can isolate it and breed it out." For a moment, a quick infectious smile curled at the edges of his mouth. Liz found herself smiling back, unstintingly.

"Tell me more," she said.

"Listen," Michael said, softly, softly. "There was a treatise on this, I wish I had it. I can see exactly what shelf it was on in the old part of the library."

Liz sucked in a breath. "You saw it? The library of Antar? Where they had one of every book that was ever written?"

Michael grinned at her. "Yeah. Of course. My family used to joke I lived there." He tugged at his hair, the grin not faltering. “It wasn’t actually every book, but we tried.”

Her eyes stayed so wide, her hands twisted in her lap, as if she was keeping herself from reaching for all those lost books. "I wish I had seen those books before they burned. That must have been something."

"Oh." Michael bit his lip, the grin fading quickly. "I haven't-- no one told me but I guess it makes sense. It's gone, the library? Did Manes burn it?"

Liz shook her head, trying to remember that story. The fact of all those books was almost sadder than the cause. "No, I don't think so. General Rath did, they say, when he came back to the city. He was mad with grief."

"General-- but why?" The look on his face, the way it changed-- wide bright eyes. Near tears. “All those books were still there when Manes left?”

His eyes. The hurt in him was suddenly raw and exposed. Open in a way that it hadn't been even when he was looking to die. Liz stepped closer, thinking about what Rosa had said again. How it was maybe true. "I don't know? They say it was his wife and son's favorite place. He made the whole city a funeral pyre and that was the kindling."

There was a soft, almost inaudible, "oh." 

And then, as if they hadn't spoken of it at all, he talked to her about lines of descent of plants like he was telling her about strategy in a war.

And she listened and put in her own thoughts.

The next summer they mixed in hybrids of the golden flower, that bred with the originals. The next season, they made them sterile.

The next season, the golden flower that had choked the land vanished, like it had never been.

**  
On a summer evening, not long after the last golden flower had bloomed and died, Rosa stood up in front of Michael and smiled and unfastened her leather apron, leaving a cotton sheath underneath. It clung to the curves of her hips and breasts and belly.

Michael’s eyebrows went up and he breathed in softly. “I didn’t know you thought of me that way,” he said.

“I didn’t know I was able to think of anyone that way anymore,” Rosa said, light and cool. “But you-- I can trust you.”

He closed his eyes. “Can I trust you?”

“I wouldn’t hurt you on purpose," she said. His eyes when he opened them were clear in the sunlight. "Or do you want Jesse Manes to have taken this from you too?" With a slow, careful motion, she pulled her dress over her head, leaving her bare and golden.

His breath caught, audibly. "I can't," he whispered, but he stepped forward anyway, hands shaking. She took them in hers, the ruined hand and the true, and put them on the bare curve of her breasts. 

"You can," she said. And lifted his shattered hand to her lips, gently brushing her mouth over a knuckle. "I gave you a sword. Let me give you this."

"Why," he asked, still shaking, shaken, while she undid the laces of his shirt. "Are you in love with me?"

She smiled and shook her head, her dark hair beautiful and gleaming where it was caught up close to her head. "No," she said. "Are you with me?"

"No," he agreed. And then, very slowly, he leaned down and she kissed him.

**Author's Note:**

> I really appreciate comments/kudos/etc. If you liked something about this story, I'd love to know!
> 
> I'm also on Tumblr @ninswhimsy

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Hands Held in the Dark](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22885891) by [christchex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/christchex/pseuds/christchex)


End file.
